One I kind of like

NyQuil

“Don’t say you felt obliged.”

She placed spheres underneath
my tongue.
In hours, we spun
through glass.

“Did you see it?”

Jackson Pollock painted her hair
in the back of a
green Buick.

“Denver is pretty this time of year.”

My dad struggled up the
mountain; I fell through
a man in Boulder.

This was poem was formed through me kind of... imagining a conversation with a friend. The stanzas are made up semi fictional accounts of things that have happened to me. The lines in quotations actually have nothing to do with the conversational aspects of this poem, oddly enough. The shape and form are pretty straightforward, the lines in quotations are being used to separate stories. I think this makes the poem more readable, because you're not being presented with a mess of weird, half fictional, stories all at once.

One I don't like so much

Here's a poem I'm working on in class..

Strychnine

Lightning flashes and rotting livers

“You ran away a year ago.”

Records spun
in the background.

I was coughing that day…

We probably take ourselves
a bit too seriously.

Fuck the audience.
just relax.

This poem was formed by looking at a point in time in my past, and ind of mingling it with the present. It's a kind of conversation with myself, in away, while looking back at an event. The shape and form of the poem are pretty straight forward. The stanzas are different parts of the past and the present, separated where ever one thought left or a new one began.... in most cases.I think this helps with readability, because you have these tiny little sections of text that are easier to process. I need to be more specific with this stuff, but I'll probably  edit all this in the morning anyway.

I'm not particularly fond of the first line in this poem. Does anyone have an suggestions? It's going to be changed, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet.

Assignment two: Keranen

And What Of The Moss
By: Charmi Keranen
From: The Afterlife is a Dry County
Published by: Big Wonderful Press


The couple you saw
lying deep inside themselves

their backs pressed into
that tall blue field

their hands touching

the grass and its sway

There was a stolen bicycle chained
to a crucifix

The Born Again don't bleed

or pedal - really

I looked, once, into
those gray polished stones

The woman's lips were moving

The man was closing his eyes


I chose this poem in particular because it reminded me of some of the things I have wrote, to an extent. Particularly, the stanza that reads "There was a stolen bicycle chained/ to a crucifix." That particular separation, putting the "to a crucifix" on a separate line reminds me of my own work. If I were writing that same sentence in a poem, that's the exact way it would be wrote. I'm not sure why to be honest, it just feels right. The last two lines reminded me of things I write as well. Two separate people, unnamed, doing a simple action, separated into individual lines. I have ended a ton of poems in that way. Once again, I'm not sure why, but it seems right to me. Besides the poem reminding me of my own work, I'm fond of the lack of punctuation. The poem doesn't feel rushed, even though it has no punctuation (probably because of the white space.) I also enjoyed her decisions on which sentences to begin with a capital letter. It helps the break the poem into sentences, even though punctuation is absent.

Assignment one: Cynthia Cruz

Strange Gospels
By: Cynthia Cruz
From: The Glimmering Room
Published by: Four Way Books


Caged tiger, I can't see.
Foster home nightmare, kinder-
Slut, maybe. Go on
God, watch me

Killing off
With my prissy pistol.



I chose this particular poem mostly because the first three lines stuck out to me. You're first brought in by the image of a caged tiger,  followed by closely by "Foster home nightmare." The two are describing the same thing, at least to me, the idea of being trapped and having no control over the situation. I feel like the image of a the caged tiger was a genius way to describe being trapped by foster homes, if that's even what Cruz means. Next we see "kinder-Slut" broken up between two lines. Kinder obviously brings images of young, innocent children, which is of course destroyed in the next line by "Slut." This is something Cruz seems to do frequently, combine innocent, child like imagery with serious adult themes, and I like it a lot. I'm also fond of the last line. "Prissy pistol" sounds wonderful. The reader gets typical, friendly, alliteration between two words that should probably never go together.